MPEG-4: ISO 14496-10 (Video) - Advanced Video Coding (AVC)

06/30/2010 19:00:41

With AVC/H.264 the MPEG-4 Standard defines one of the newest and also one of the technically best available, state-of-the-art Video Coding Formats.

The AVC/H.264 Video Coding Standard was together finalized and identically specified in 2003 by two Groups, the MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) from ISO and the VCEG (Video Coding Experts Group) from ITU (International Telecommunication Union), a suborganisation of the United Nations (UNO), which also standardised the H.263 format (mainly used in video conference software now)
The AVC/H.264 Standard itself was developed by the Joint Video Team (JVT), which included experts from both MPEG and VCEG.

Looking from the MPEG side the standard is called MPEG-4 Part 10 (ISO 14496-10), looking from the ITU side, it is called H.264 (the ITU document number), by which the format is widely known already.
As "official" title for the new standard Advanced Video Coding (AVC) was chosen by MPEG - as video counterpart to the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio format.

AVC/H.264 Profiles

AVC/H.264 defines four different Profiles: Baseline, Main, Extended and High Profile (which themselves are subdivided into Levels):

Only the future will tell which Profile and which Tools will be the one most usable for DVD Backups, but i assume it will be the Main and/or High Profile with maybe the following tools (also check out the tool description of MPEG-4 ASP as all, except GMC, are available in AVC too):

CAVLC/CABAC:
AVC/H.264 defines two, more advanced tools for entropy coding of the bitstream syntax (macroblock-type, motionvectors + reference-index...) than MPEG-4 ASP: Context-Adaptive Variable Length Coding (CAVLC) and Context-Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding (CABAC).
CABAC, compared to CAVLC (aka UVLC) which is the default method in AVC/H.264, is a more powerful compression method, being said to bring down the bitrate. additonally by about 10-15% (especially on high bitrates). CABAC (as CAVLC) is a lossless method and therefore will never hurt the quality, but will slow down encoding and decoding.

Loop/Deblocking Filter:
in contrary to prefiltering (for example via avisynth, done on the input), or postprocessing/filtering (via the decoder, done on the final output), LoopFiltering is applied during the encoding process on every single frame, after it got encoded, but before it gets used as reference for the following frames. This helps avoiding blocking artifacts, especially on low bitrates, but will slow down en/decoding.

Variable Block Sizes/Macroblock Partitions:
in contrary to MPEG-4 ASP (where, only with Inter4V/4MV, the Block Sizes can varry between 16x16 and 8x8 pixels), AVC/H.264 offers for Motion Search Precision the division of a macroblock down to 4x4 pixels (including steps like 8x4...). The Block Size is adaptive/variable, a good encoder will be smart enough to decide which one is best to use in every specific macroblock .

Multiple Reference Frames:
in contrary to MPEG-4 ASP (which only allows using the frame before the actual frame as reference), AVC/H.264 offers choosing from multiple ones for inter motion search, which means the codec can decide whether he wants to simply refer to the previous frame (like in ASP) or even to a frame before that. Because of that (eg a P-Frame can refer to a frame before the latest I-Frame) a new frametype had to be introduced: IDR-Frames, which are I-Frames before which no following frame is allowed to refer to. Allowing multiple reference frames will slow down encoding and decoding and cutting will be only possible at IDR-Frames.

Weighted Prediction:
With Weigthed Prediction there can be weights applied to a reference frame (eg you can scale (brightness-wise) a previous picture). This helps especially whenever there are fades, where the subsequent picture is very similar to the previous one except that it is darker. WP will not help with cross-fades (eg a fade from one scene to another).

Rate Distortion Optimisation (RDO):
RDO allows the encoder to make the most efficient coding decisions whenever it has to choose between different choices (for example when it comes to inter/intra decisions, motion search...)
RDO is not a tool defined by the AVC/H.264 specs, but it's a new decision making approach which was first introduced by the H.264 reference software. Other codecs can also make use of RDO, like XviD's VHQ Mode enables RDO already for example.

An overview of AVC/H.264 compared to other popular video coding formats:

- interoperability: most implementations support different container formats atm:
.mp4: which is the container of AVC defined in the MPEG-4 Standard (ISO 14496-15) and supported by Nero, Sorenson, Envivio, Moonlight and x264 atm
.mpg: which is the container of AVC defined in the MPEG-2 Standard (ISO 13818-1, AMD3) and supported by Mainconcept and Moonlight atm
.avi: using AVC-in-AVI is nowhere standardized and therefore already causes incompatibilies. The limitations of AVI and VFW (eg regarding b-frames or arbitrary frame coding orders), together with the necessary hacks caused by these two formats, hinder the full implementation of all possible features AVC offers and therefore harm the possible quality or at least the speed of the development, the interoperability and therefore also the competition. AVI is currently used by VSS and x264 (mencoder and vfw)
.264/.h264: the raw bitstream not stored in a container. output for example by the reference, x264cli, mencoder and mainconcept

- speed: some current encoder implementations are pretty slow (mostly the commercial previews)
still x264 and NeroDigital's AVC encoder seems to offer already a nice speed and quality. But this doesnt change the fact that AVC is a very advanced video coding format and therefore encoding on old CPU's can be very time consuming.

MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 on Hardware - HD-DVD/Blu-ray

Two organisations (the DVD Forum and the Blu-ray Disc Association) are currently working on the successor of the popular DVD format, which will support so called High Definition content (larger picture sizes than current DVD): HD-DVD and BD-ROM

As reported here the DVD Forum already made the decision that MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 will be used as mandatory video codec for HD-DVD
Also the Blu-ray Disc Association has announced the inclusion of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 as can be read here

It is therefore very likely that AVC/H.264 will be THE upcoming video format, which will be widely used and supported, like it is the case with MPEG-2 (used in DVD) today

further documentation

Read more about the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 here for a detailed overview, summarized info here or here
a list of available implementations
The AVC Verification Test Results can be found here
The whole specs of AVC/H.264 can be downloaded here (Draft from the 7-14 March 2003)
Technical Info about Blu-ray is available here